Acoustic Noise of MRI Scans of the Internal Auditory Canal and Potential for Intracochlear Physiological Changes

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a widely used medical imaging technique to assess the health of the auditory (vestibulocochlear) nerve. A well known problem with MRI machines is that the acoustic noise they generate during a scan can cause auditory temporary threshold shifts (TTS) in humans. In addition, studies have shown that excessive noise in general can cause rapid physiological changes of constituents of the auditory within the cochlea. Here, we report in-situ measurements of the acoustic noise from a 1.5 Tesla MRI machine (GE Signa) during scans specific to auditory nerve assessment. The measured average and maximum noise levels corroborate earlier investigations where TTS occurred. We briefly discuss the potential for physiological changes to the intracochlear branches of the auditory nerve as well as iatrogenic misdiagnoses of intralabyrinthine and intracochlear schwannomas due to hypertrophe of the auditory nerve within the cochlea during MRI assessment.